Teopicalities

rE United States Marines placed this sign on Kwajalein Atoll, in the Marshalls: Hotel Atoll—No Beer Atoll —No Women Atoll —Nuthin’ Atoll.

As has been said, the pun is the lowest form of humour, when you don’t think of it first. m ON this island of Mangaia a Sunday “tere” was recently held. The local clerics went out to the Tamorua and Ivirua districts, and the soul-savers from these districts came in here.

A feast was held in the mission for the visitors. But a most unseemly levity revealed itself —they danced!

An “orometua” (pastor) hula-ed, like St. Vitus, at the feast; and the congre gation followed his example, causing no little scandal.

The aged said things were going to the dogs; and emulated Captain Shot over in prophesying an ill end for the “evangelia.”

Curiously enough, the same night a terrific electric storm broke over Man gaia. The loudest thunder, the most awesome lightning, any had ever seen.

The old-’uns weren’t scared, though; the heavens, to them, were telling of the decay of Christianity, and the indignity of dancing Davids.

The burning question now is—what’s coming next?—EG. * THE British officers who maintained Colonial administration in the Solo mons during the Japanese occupa tion can truthfully say that there was “never a dull moment” in their busy and nomadic lives.

One of them told me how, when cross ing from one island to another in a native canoe, he was dismayed to find two lines of Jap barges approaching him from opposite directions. He lay face down in the middle of the canoe while the barges went past—one line on each side, with scarcely more than a hundred yards separating them.

But that didn’t end his adventures.

Later, he got safely to his destination and slept the night in a native hut in the village. When he woke in the morn ing he strolled to the doorway and looked out. What he saw caused him'to execute a Douglas Fairbanks dive through the back window and beat a hasty retreat into the bush. A party of Jap soldiers, evidently disembarked from the barges he had seen the day before, was marching through the village.—HC. * MAJOR E. B. AYRIS, formerly of Wau, New Guinea (and interested in amateur theatricals) says we insist in putting him in “small ships” whereas he was. until recently, attached to the. British Merchant Navy and was never hear a small ship. At all events he has now left the sea and has settled down on a sheep station near Brewar rina. NSW. This is what he writes us: “New Guinea certainly gets represented in most unlikely places. About a month after I had been resident here I was told that one Hayward, from New Guinea, had just arrived. I went to the store which I was told he was managing, and there as large as life was ‘Bill’ Hay ward, one-time with WRC at Wau.

“ ‘Bill’ was a great asset in Wau with his saxophone, steel guitar, fiddle and repertoire of swing and hill-billy ditties.

He also played a couple of excellent comedy parts for me in my last two productions up there.

“The coincidence doesn’t finish there, for the .book-keeper in Hayward’s store

is one B. Schultz, also one-time on the Goldfields. Three Goldfielders in a small place like Brewarrina is somewhat unusual. Hayward has just brought his wife and five children from Orange and seems settled down.” * rE title under a picture in “Daily Mirror,” Sydney:

“A Village Tul-Tul (Papuan

medicine man) smiles widely to wel come the Duke of Gloucester during his visit to the Royal Papuan Con stabulary compound at Lae, New Guinea.”

Which would be perfectly correct, except for three things: The gentleman was not a Tultul. A Tultul is not a medicine-man. Tultul is not a title known in Papua.

This is typical of the treatment endured by Territorians at the hands of Austra lia’s politicians, and Australia’s even more ignorant press.

SYDNEY “Mirror,” on June 27, printed a photograph of a 50 ft. motor cruiser, “Halcyon,” which they stated had been bought by Squadron- Leader J. A. Thurston in Launceston, Tasmania, and was being sailed by him to Sydney.

Jack Thurston is well known in New Guinea, where he had planting and min ing interests —he owns what was Wewak’s first gold lease, the famous “Number One Gold.” It was said of him in the days before the war that when you met him he was either buying or selling a boat. He sailed at least two from Aus tralia to New Guinea, with the help of

native crews, in the days “along before.”

Just before the war he bought the 45 ft.

“Destiny” from the Grimson brothers, who had sailed her up from Australia to New Guinea.

It is not known what he intends doing with “Halcyon”; or whether it was merely a purchase on behalf of the raaf. • ... mHIS story is topical rather than tropi- X cal. One of the sights of wartime Sydney are its queues, particularly the grog and tobacco Queues. The tobacco queues take in both sexes, but the grog queues seem to be comprised exclusively of middle-aged females of a hard, raffish or frowsy aspect who have some sort of sixth sense which tells them “when it will be on.” On their flat splay feet, surrounded by outsize shopping bags and occasionally offspring, they wait patiently for hours before the doois open, In Wynyard underground station the queues are at their best. The attenuated two from the tobacco kiosks intermingle; there are the half-dozen from the rail way booking offices, and there is the periodic grog queue for the Plaza Hotel, which has an entrance into the station, (The Plaza is run by Ponce Parer, well known before the war in the Morobe and Sepik districts of New Guinea.) It is said that if a man pauses for a moment anywhere in Wynyard to fumble for change in his pocket, a dozen people line up behind him before he can get it and move on.

Denizens of Wynyard are blase about their queues, but even they were shat tered recently when two sweet-faced nuns joined the end of the long grog queue for the Plaza Hotel. Railway ticket clerks watched them with interest and, among train and tram travellers scurrying to